From rebels to patriots

Paul Revere's ride in December 1774 makes for good guerrilla mischief, prompting the rebel seizure of more than one hundred barrels of gunpowder from a lightly guarded British fort. Less effective was his famous ride the following April to warn the people of the Massachusetts countryside of another British advance. After all, he was captured midway between Lexington and Concord.

Yet Revere's more than a dozen daring trips to spread news of British activities were the start of something bigger, poses author Walter Borneman. That December ride, and the events of the six months that followed, galvanized the resolve of the American colonists to challenge the seemingly unbeatable British. It was, as Borneman adapts the phrase coined 235 years later for a wave of protests in Arab nations, the "American Spring."

"I'm interested in defining moments," Borneman said in a telephone interview from his home in Colorado. "The situation was pretty tenuous at the time. It could have gone either way."

It was during those six months that American protests against British taxation swept the colonies from Massachusetts to Virginia and beyond. Borneman writes, "a fractured and ragtag group of colonial militias had to coalesce rapidly to have even the slightest chance of toppling the mighty British Army."

Why another book on a topic so often written before?

"As always, my overriding goal has been to tell a good story that makes these times more accessible to the general reader," Borneman wrote in his acknowledgments. Second, the perspective of how what happened in the colonies in 1775 mirrors what happened centuries later halfway across the world.

Like the Civil War that would take place 90 years later, the Revolution turned friend against friend, and son against father. John Adams and Jonathan Sewall were both lawyers and close friends. They remained so until 1774, when Adams was chosen a delegate to the First Continental Congress. Similarly, Col. Josiah Quincy, a Boston merchant, had three sons. Two followed their father in supporting the colonies' bid for freedom. The other became a staunch loyalist.

The "Aha!" moment for Borneman comes on April 19, 1775, at the defense of Lexington Green.

"By afternoon it was war. In a couple hours it went from incident to full-blown war, complete with military maneuvers," Borneman said. "They went from rebels to patriots."

Amid the chaos of Lexington Green, both sides claimed there were orders not to fire. Someone did, and by the time musket balls stopped flying, only members of the Lexington militia lay dead. This, Borneman writes, was among several key events that happened in the spring of 1775.

"After the spring of 1775," Borneman wrote, "the dreams of most patriots were unequivocally clear. No matter how difficult the road ahead, the only acceptable destination was independence and a new nation."

Carter, the Daily Press Williamsburg editor, can be reached at 757-345-2347.